"Well, then, say it," remarked Miss Hale cruelly.
Sargent had met plenty of women and, with his good looks and reputation for wealth, had usually scored an easy victory. But this girl was so straightforward and so absolutely calm that he did not know how to proceed. With an uneasy laugh he strove to fall into her humour. "I love you," he stammered.
"Why?" asked Lesbia, still calm and exasperating.
"Look in the glass, and ask me why," he said ardently. "Can I behold such loveliness and----"
"Captain Sargent," she broke in, smiling broadly, "you speak just like a lover of the mid-Victorian epoch. I have read such speeches in books, and I have always thought them exceedingly silly. Be more original!"
Don Giovanni himself would have turned restive when advised to alter his style of love-making, and Captain Sargent's waxen face grew red with wrath. He was a bloodless person, so his anger was more like that of a fretful child than that of a man.
Lesbia looked at him with a contempt which he found hard to bear. She wanted a man to master her as all women do, and she saw that this wooer could never dominate.
"You are very unkind, Lesbia," was all that Sargent could find to say.
"In that case, why not leave me and go back to my father?"
"Because I came from your father. He wants you to marry me. I want it also. Come," he went on coaxingly, "be my wife, Lesbia, and you shall have everything that the world can give you."